Re: backing up a drive
On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 00:17 -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2006, Philippe De Ryck wrote:
>
> > A pointer: take a dump of the entire drive (dd if=/dev/hda) and not just
> > partition. I've had some systems that wouldn't accept the restored
> > version (PC wouldn't boot anymore due to no OS found) unless the whole
> > disk was restored.
>
> I've done this plenty of times over the years. You just need to rerun a
> boot loader following the partition restore. Lilo does well for this.
>
> The bootloader can be run from a local Linux partition or from a live
> cdrom as is preferred by the admin. Think about disaster recovery which
> ever way you go (eg, the entire disk is toast).
>
> Rob
>
Well, I'll elaborate on the situation I encountered. I didn't look into
it very much, because when the problem occurred I didn't have the time
to do so. Since it was a Windows-only system, there was no lilo
installed.
If I restored only hda1 the PC wouldn't boot. I tried a lot of options:
I tried to restore the MBR using lilo, to no avail. I tried restoring
the MBR using the WindowsXP repair console (or whatever that thing is
called) using fixmbr and fixboot, all to no avail. The system didn't
recognize the operating system. In the repair console however, I could
"connect" to the installation and everything was where it was supposed
to be.
This is where I gave up (It cost me way more time than I had to spare).
If anyone can elaborate on this that would be great. I believe the
hardware has been decomissioned a few weeks ago, so I would be able to
run some tests (in the future, because the schedule is packed right
now). Any suggestions welcome!
Philippe De Ryck
PS: if this should be in a new thread, feel free to reply in a new one!
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